Silver Hands And Stolen Hearts
by CloudCuckooLandHasAQueen
Summary: Months after the curse in Storybrooke Maine is lifted, a messenger comes in search of his lost princess, only to find that she's already involved in her own fractured fairytale. This world has never suited Molly Hooper anyway.
1. Going Home

**Majorly crack fic that I have to write for a friend of mine. I would have never combined these two shows if it weren't for his little show matchmaker thingy. But hey, it could be funny. And since I've been writing a lot of Sherlolly recently I thought "hey why not some more?!" **

**I do not own Once Upon a Time or Sherlock.**

Molly Hooper stood shivering in the cold, her hair let down as she indulged in smoking a fag stolen from Sherlock's coat. The spectacle twenty minutes before had reaffirmed what she previously figured out upon entering this world; happy endings do not exist here. Love may exist, but it was tainted and twisted beyond recognition. Her own love only brought her pain. She pondered ripping her own heart out, and allowing it safekeeping in a chest buried somewhere safe. Of course, she didn't want to resort to such a measure. Taking out her humanity would save her pain, but oh the things she could do if she had no heart. She wouldn't care for another soul but herself. She could have anything except the love she so desired. Molly pressed her hand over her heart, hearing its audible thudding. If she took out her heart, she wouldn't desire love; she would desire nothing but power.

"The curse that ripped us from our forest has been broken." A man sauntered in, taking the fag from her mouth and inhaled deeply, chuckling and coughing, "It remains."

"Intact?"

"More or less. Well less. It's not a pretty sight, but there are people waking up and getting by." Her piper smiled, "I missed you."

"I missed you too." She took a puff before handing it back to the lanky messenger to finish, "No doubt you came to tell me of the news."

"Yes. It's safe to go home now."

0

At the urging of John, Sherlock came out to check on Molly who would no doubt be sobbing in her own corner of the street. Really, how was he supposed to know that she—never mind, where was she? He turned the corner, only to hide again, peeking out at the scene before him. Molly stood next to an attractive man she obviously knew, sharing a fag with him. First off, he was pretty sure Molly didn't smoke, so it must have been his, but his coughing proved that theory wrong, secondly, Molly didn't talk to men who looked like they had just crawled out of a sewer, except possibly to give them change, being the soft hearted person she is.

"I missed you too." He heard, "No doubt you came to tell me the news."

What news?

"Yes. It's safe to go home now." Sherlock's mind was abuzz with curiosity, but if he came out demanding answers, he would most likely not get any.

"It's been years, my dear friend. I doubt a warm welcome would greet me."

"Would you rather me let you rot in this hell hole? This disgusting city filled with disgusting people who have no love but for themselves? You're not happy here, I can tell, do not pretend. Never pretend to me." Who was this man who thought he knew Molly? Of course Molly was happy here, she had a decent job, a handful of good friends—

"I never said I wouldn't go back. I just said not to get your hopes up. When do we leave, my little piper?"

"Tomorrow. I will come."

"I will be ready."

Sherlock had no idea what transpired, but the idea of Molly leaving him—leaving them, all of them—was unacceptable. Twelve to fifteen hours was plenty of time to make an obviously emotionally distressed Molly Hooper stay and work in the morgue where she belonged. The man clasped her shoulder, kissed her hand, and then left, leaving a very still Molly for a moment longer. She smothered a giggle with her hand, and then did a miniature cheer before hailing a cab with a smile on her face that Sherlock had never seen before.

He returned to the party, John making a beeline towards him, "Well, where is she?"

"She hailed a taxi."

"And you didn't pay for it."

"No I didn't speak to her. She was discussing leaving London with a friend she met on the street. Then he left and then she hailed a taxi, climbed in and drove off."

"Now you've done it, Sherlock. Do you know how long it'll take to find another pathologist that can possibly stand you?" Sherlock was distracted by a text from The Woman.

0

The next day, Molly was buzzing from nerves and excitement alike, each warring in her mind as she tried to focus on her work. There was little need for it anymore, but she was going home, back to where things actually halfway made sense, back to magic, back to at least having the possibilities of a happy ending. If the piper believed that the forest was a wreck, then it must be, but Molly didn't care. She had waited in the background, frozen in this age for twenty-eight years. She witnessed people coming and going, witnessed horrors, and learned that every once in a while, her image would refresh, and suddenly she was the new girl in the morgue, constantly locked at the age of twenty-seven, although she could pass for thirty or thirty-one or younger. Really, she was simply something shapeless and malleable by the events surrounding her.

Sherlock breezed through the door, "Molly I think you look—"

"No." Molly no longer had to fear being noticed now, "Sorry Sherlock, I'm leaving any moment now—"

"You realize you have to turn in a resignation two weeks in advance to—"

"Mike has let it slide." She didn't even ask how he knew she was quitting, leaving, _going home, _she was used to it by now, "Well John, Sherlock, it was lovely making your acquaintances and all but—"

"Don't you think you're overreacting? Sherlock is—"

"It's not about Sherlock. It's about me finally getting to go home, back where I belong." Molly smiled, just as the piper came in through the door.

"Ah! Are we ready?" he tipped his hat, "Gentlemen."

"Yes." Molly smiled, "Open your door, my Pied Piper."

0

Sherlock couldn't believe his eyes. The piper, as Molly called him, pulled out a flute and played a tune he did not recognize. A door suddenly grew out of nothing on the wall. The piper stopped playing, taking Molly's hand and opening the door to a swirling purple vortex. He only processed what his eyes saw, not the how and the why that surrounded it. Molly and the piper stepped through the doorway and disappeared. Sherlock was frozen. John was the one who took action grabbing Sherlock by the arm, and jumping through the door. Strange images and winds surrounded them as they were carried away.

They dropped into a clearing rather unceremoniously glancing around.

"All right. What the bloody hell was that?" John voiced what they were both thinking.

"That was a portal." Molly's voice came from behind them, "This is the Enchanted Forest." She looked around at the broken trees and the darkened sky, "At least what's left of it, anyway." Molly pressed her lips in a thin line, "Sherlock. Please don't panic on me."


	2. We broke Sherlock

Molly found that travelling through portals was rarely a pleasant event, as such travel caused a great deal of discomfort. She still found it rather pathetic to watch Sherlock and John tumble out and remain completely on the ground, John splayed like a starfish, and Sherlock curled up in a ball. The nausea she felt soon passed as she quickly acclimated to her old home. The trees were in bad condition though, signs of ogres rushing through were evident. Twenty-eight years and her forest felt strangely familiar and foreign at the same time.

"These were made by ogres." She commented, taking the handkerchief held out by Piper and wiping her hands of the mud.

"Yes, they've run rampant since the curse." Piper replied, "We must proceed with caution." He caught John's gaze, as the man had finally stood up and was beginning to reach towards the small of his back, "No firearms, mate. They're attracted to the sound.

Reluctantly, John removed the gun from his waistband bypassing Piper's outstretched hand in favor of giving it to Molly after emptying the magazine. Shrugging, Molly proceeded to toss it in a nearby pond—well bog, it was definitely a bog now.

"Oi!" John protested about to say more but Molly cut him off.

"It's useless here." Molly glancedover at the huddled mass that was Sherlock holmes. He was shaking, muttering the names of amino acids beneath his breath by function and within each function alphabetically. Slowly, Molly approached him, kneeling beside Sherlock with a hand on his shoulder. Molly truly couldn't blame him, his entire world had literally been ripped away from him. If Piper had any sense of sympathy, he wouldn't have left his door open for so long. He however, obviously took great pleasure in watching Sherlock have a complete meltdown.

"Sherlock. Sherlock! Sherlock, look at me!" Sherlock finally obeyed, looking oddly lost and dazed by the entire situation, "Piper cannot create his door for another forty-six hours and we're not safe here. So I will need you to stand up and walk with me." Like a robot, Sherlock jerked up to his feet, "Good, good, you're doing wonderfully."

0

John has had better days, however he couldn't say that he had stranger, even running around with Sherlock Holmes. But, like a good soldier who was very much favor in not dying, he decided that for the time being, he would take it all into stride. Really, he found it strangest that Molly was talking to Sherlock without stuttering and Sherlock was flipping out obviously, but doing what Molly said.

"So…this place is called the Enchanted Forest? Why?" He asked this Piper person.

"Because it is enchanted and because it is a forest." Piper gestured wildly, "This is own home! Oh I forgot, Molly there's a safe haven of sorts nearby run by an old friend of yours. Wait, Robin Hood is our friend, right?"

"Yes, unless you've done something awful these past years. Where is he?"

"The Dark One's castle." Molly's expression darkened.

"What happened to him?"

"I have confirmed that he was swept into Storybrooke with the curse."

"Is he still there?"

"Last I heard, he's in Neverland."

"Neverland?! I never would have guessed! Why the bloody hell would he go there?"

"Something about the son of the Savior, I dunno, I didn't really pay attention. I just hightailed it out of there to tell you that time is moving again for us and that we could leave."

"Oh good. Being twenty-seven for twenty-eight years was getting rather tiresome."

"You're fifty-five years old?" Sherlock's voice suddenly came back, "Impossible."

"A lot of things are pretty possible, Sherlock Holmes." Molly touched his shoulder again, "This is a world of magic."

"Preposterous."

"But true!" The Piper injected merrily.

"Think of it as a place with different laws of physics. So we need to be relatively quiet so no shouting, no blowing things up, no shooting—okay took away your gun I remember that now, and absolutely no arguing with me on any basis no matter what idiotic thing I say, the only person here who may know better than me about this world is Piper, and that's simply because he's been here the past twenty-eight or so years. Trust me, okay?"

John nodded, glaring over at Sherlock as they walked, "Sherlock."

Sherlock muttered.

"Louder please, Sherlock."

He only caught the word "impossible."

"Sherlock!"

"Fine! This is obviously some sort of incredibly detailed hallucination of an entirely impossible scenario but I suppose I can just go along with it for now. This isn't real. Ogres? Other worlds? Molly being in charge? Things like this don't just happen."

"No. First you have to make a door, then you must establish the portal, and then you go through it and then voila! Ogres and other worlds! Wait...she doesn't boss you around normally? Impossible!" The Piper glanced around wildly, suddenly very interested in a speck in the distance, muttering darkly beneath his breath.

Molly paused, waiting for his little fit to be other with before she answered."I was trying to keep a low profile—"

"You are the Silver Princess, you must be respected!"

"Yes, and if you remember correctly, I was tossed out of the throne like a hot potato."

"Details, details, you're still a princess to me."

John could really describe Sherlock's expression as one great "Are you shitting me?"


End file.
